Russia sought to influence LGBT voters with ‘Buff Bernie’ adWashington Blade
The highly anticipated dump of social media ads Russian propagandists used to influence the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton was made public Wednesday, revealing at least one ad aimed at titillating gay voters with a buffed up version of her …

Donald Trumps apocryphal invention, which dates back to the noughties, takes title in dictionarys annual reckoning of the most-used new expressions

Fake news has acquired a certain legitimacy after being named word of the year by Collins, following what the dictionary called its ubiquitous presence over the last 12 months.

Collins Dictionarys lexicographers, who monitor the 4.5bn-word Collins corpus, said that usage of the term had increased by 365% since 2016. The phrase, often capitalised, is frequently a feature of Donald Trumps rhetoric; in the last few days alone he has tweeted of how the Fake News is working overtime in relation to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, and of how Fake News [is] weak!

Six weeks ago, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski mentioned four fellow Trump advisers by name while making the argument that anyone who is guilty of conspiring with Russia should go to prison. This week, two of the four were arrested. It raised the question of whether Lewandowski knew something specific that he wasn’t letting on. Now he’s once again mentioning the other two advisers by name.

Here’s what Lewandowski said in September: “I think if anybody, and Ive said this, if Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, or Rick Gates or Carter Page, or anybody else attempted to influence the outcome of the U.S. election through any means thats inappropriate through collusion, coordination, or cooperation I hope they go to jail for the rest of their lives.” (link) Everyone knew Manafort would likely be arrested eventually, but few saw the Gates arrest coming. Was this just a lucky guess, or did Lewandowski see and hear enough within the campaign to know who would end up going down first? On Wednesday, he expanded on his assertions.

After USA Today and the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had implicated Corey Lewandowski as part of his formal confession, Lewandowski appeared on Meet The Press and angrily and almost apoplectically denied having had any involvement with Russia. He once again named Roger Stone and Carter Page while asserting that anyone who conspired with Russia should be held legally accountable, without offering any evidence against either of them.

So here’s the question: if Corey Lewandowski was right about the Manafort and Gates arrests, at a time when no one saw the Gates arrest coming, does this mean that Roger Stone and Carter Page are also about to be arrested? In other words, is Lewandowski just listing off the people he doesn’t personally like, or does he truly know something we don’t?

The social media ads Russia wanted Americans to seePoliticoRussian accounts bought thousands of social media ads on hot-button U.S. issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to illegal immigration, according to a batch of the ads released Wednesday by members of the House intelligence panel. Here is a sampling of …

Lawmakers Release Russia-Linked Facebook AdsSnopes.com
The few dozen ads, a small sampling of the roughly 3,000 Russian-connected ones that Facebook has identified and turned over to Congress, underscore how foreign agents sought to sow discord among Americans through social media messages on …

The Man Who Could Break the Russia Investigation Wide OpenWNYC
Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about an April 2016 conversation with aRussian professor who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. Max Kutner, a senior politics writer at Newsweek, and Amy Sabrin, a …

White House signals Trump will stay out of Mueller’s wayPolitico
Defunding the Russia investigation? Influential Republicans are warning the White House to avoid such a direct attack. Setting up a dueling probe to dig into Democratic scandals? That might distract attention, but it won’t stop Mueller’s wide-ranging …

The social media ads Russia wanted Americans to seePoliticoRussian accounts bought thousands of social media ads on hot-button U.S. issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to illegal immigration, according to a batch of the ads released Wednesday by members of the House intelligence panel. Here is a sampling of …

Lawmakers Release Russia-Linked Facebook AdsSnopes.com
The few dozen ads, a small sampling of the roughly 3,000 Russian-connected ones that Facebook has identified and turned over to Congress, underscore how foreign agents sought to sow discord among Americans through social media messages on …

The Man Who Could Break the Russia Investigation Wide OpenWNYC
Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about an April 2016 conversation with aRussian professor who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. Max Kutner, a senior politics writer at Newsweek, and Amy Sabrin, a …

White House signals Trump will stay out of Mueller’s wayPolitico
Defunding the Russia investigation? Influential Republicans are warning the White House to avoid such a direct attack. Setting up a dueling probe to dig into Democratic scandals? That might distract attention, but it won’t stop Mueller’s wide-ranging …

McCain: ‘More shoes will drop’ in Mueller investigationThe Hill
is predicting that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election will ensnare more people, saying the “scandal is not over.” “I told you months ago that this was a centipede and shoes would drop, and I guarantee you…and more »

Less than 24 hours after a man drove a truck on to a bike path in New York City killing eight people, the president was blaming US immigration lawsDonald Trump reacted swiftly to the terrorist attack in New York, offering several tweets within less than 24 hours that blamed US immigration laws such as the green card lottery while calling for extreme vetting of those seeking to enter the country.